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Monday, October 27, 2014

This is my much smaller scaled down set up, without the gazebo, so I can do the market on my own. Here I am just trying to clear the Fashion Clips and PINZ I have left. Next time I hope to use the opportunity to be working on a larger mosaic work, more for publicity and so people can see what is involved.﻿

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

We are well into
the year now and, when I look back at the
goals I set myself at the beginning of 2014,
I do not feel I have spent that much time doing ‘what inspires me’. The first
four months of the year were spent on my
application to CreativeNZ, for a grant to attend the EuroSynergy Conference in
Malta, which was successful; then organising
for and attending the event at the end of April/beginning of May. This was a
fantastic opportunity and was made even
better by the fact that I won a ‘Best in Sculpture’ in the 2014 International
Polymer Clay Awards, announced at the conference. Apart from teaching a short
course of polymer clay evening classes, other polymer clay workshops have waned
because of lack of participants, which is disappointing after the amount of
time I spent last year preparing teaching material. Exploration of a few ideas
(hollow lighting forms and PINZ) then crept in as well as the creation of a
couple of sculptures (from long planned ideas) for exhibitions.

A few weeks ago I spent
three solid days thoroughly cleaning, tidying and de-cluttering my tiny studio.
I have a few events planned to try and clear old stock from my de-cluttering
process. I now feel in a good frame of mind to work on something new and, for a
while, to just ‘do what inspires me’ rather than creating work to sell. I
posted recently about a new area of exploration that I am calling ‘dot mosaics’
for want of a better term. As I have said previously, my original
reason for turning to polymer clay was so I could make my own mosaic tiles. I
have searched extensively on Google and cannot really find anyone creating mosaics with round tiles,
especially not hand made, which is good as I always want to do something different
to everyone else.

I enjoy creating mosaic designs and laying out the tiles. I have not yet
tried making a mosaic with round tiles but I am hoping that, if I keep the
designs simple and use a range of different sized round tiles, there will be no
need for cutting tiles. The round tiles should be able to be placed fairly
quickly, butt jointed in a random fashion, just filling the larger interstices
with smaller tiles. I will have to see if the design will still read but
hopefully by varying the shades of different colours and maybe introducing
different textures, as well as leaving a slightly wider grout joint between
different elements in the design, it will work.

Apart from being a quicker method for creating mosaics (although I will
have to make all the tiles from polymer clay), I hope it will create mosaics
with a softer, more organic feel, rather than the normal square or angular cut
tiles that are used. We seem to be naturally drawn to circles – it is a natural
form, living things are made from cells and is it not said that “there are no straight lines in nature”? I would love to be able to
create beautiful mosaics that people are naturally drawn to and want to touch.
A very contemporary use of an old technique – both in tile shape (round) and
material (polymer clay).